by Peter Corris
‘The trick is, my deah, not to mind!’
Tears were coming to my eyes as the chilli seared my tastebuds.
Cyn laughed. ‘I’m going to miss you, Cliff. Don’t fuck anyone in our bed. Okay?’
Eleven hours later I was back where I’d been the day before—in the departure area at Mascot airport. Cyn and I were both a bit hungover, a state that induces introspection rather than concern for others. Anyone watching us might have thought we were friends or business associates, until the boarding call came. We put our arms around each other and hugged hard.
‘I’ll ring you tonight,’ she said.
‘Have fun. Get all the water levels right. Don’t forget the tides.’
‘’Bye, Cliff.’
I watched her tall, narrow figure vanish through the door. Then I dashed to the window and saw her walking across the tarmac to the plane. She wore a blue linen suit, white blouse and medium heels. Every other man in the boarding party looked at her. I waved, even though there was no chance of her seeing me through the smoked glass. She ducked her head as she entered the plane. Six weeks. I wondered why she hadn’t suggested that I come up and visit her. The money? Don’t fuck in our bed. What about other beds? I was as suspicious as hell, and I made it worse for myself by waiting until the plane took off.
I lit a cigarette and watched the clouds swallow the plane. I had a bad feeling about this. I wanted to rush back to the house and check a few things—had she taken her black satin nightdress and the silk pyjamas with the leopard-skin pattern that she called her ‘rooting rags’? And what if she hadn’t taken them? What would that mean? I shook my head, knowing that these thoughts were profitless. Hangover thoughts, brought on by spicy Asian food, too much wine and too little sleep. Only one cure. I’d brought a flask of brandy from the house and I headed for the coffee shop to mix up some medicine.
6
The airport was beginning to feel like a better place to operate from than my office. It had coffee, a toilet, wash basins, telephones, parking space and it cost nothing to hang around there. I phoned the number Virginia Shaw had given me and got a cool female voice on the line.
‘Andrew Perkins and Associates. Juliet Farquhar speaking.’
‘Miss Farquhar, my name is Cliff Hardy. I’m a private investigator. I’d like to see Mr Andrew Perkins as soon as possible, please.’
‘In what connection, Mr Hardy?’
‘In reference to Miss Virginia Shaw.’
There was a pause. I imagined her buzzing through to put the question to the boss. It didn’t sound like the kind of operation in which people actually got up and walked across the room to do things. It occurred to me that I should know where Perkins and Associates was or were. I started to hunt in the telephone directory.
‘Mr Hardy, are you there?’
I’d dropped the book and was scrambling for it when she spoke. A page tore in my hands and I swore.
‘What did you say?’
‘I beg your pardon. I’ve … spilt my coffee. Yes, Miss Farquhar?’
The coolness was positively chilly now. ‘Mr Perkins has no client by that name. Perhaps you have the wrong information. There are a number of legal practitioners named Perkins.’
‘I’d like to see him anyway.’
‘Mr Perkins will be out of Sydney on business for the next few days. Perhaps you could call back next week?’
‘Perhaps.’
Thank you.’
She hung up. I continued my search without doing further damage to the phone book The office of Andrew Perkins and Associates was in Phillip Street. Where else? I knew the old buildings where the legal eagles had their chambers—rabbit warrens of twisting corridors, steel-cage lifts and solid oak doors. A man could barricade himself inside a place like that, or slip out very easily if he knew his burrow well. It was beginning to look as if I’d have to make a call on Mr Perkins at home. That would take some work I wondered if Miss Shaw had anticipated his non-cooperation. I wondered whether he had come to her, or vice versa, when he was her ‘client’. I wondered a lot of things.
Pleasant as it was, especially with the prospect of the bar opening soon, I couldn’t hang around the airport any longer. I drove back to the city with only the intrigue of the Shaw matter and the comfort of a couple of hundred bucks in the bank to keep me from feeling jealous and deserted.
I hadn’t gone into the private enquiry game without some preparation in the form of a long talk with Ernest Glas, who’d been a private eye since he got back from World War II. Ernie had been an MP for most of his stint, although he’d seen some action here and there. Along with a few tips about getting through locked doors and extracting information from neighbours, he’d had one critical piece of advice.
‘Cultivate a relationship with a policeman, boy,’ he’d said. ‘Better still, with a couple of policemen, and the less they know about each other the better, if you get what I mean.’
I already had a friendship with Grant Evans, who I’d served with in Malaya. It had proved useful while I was working in insurance, but I hadn’t tried to widen my net. Maybe this was the time. I drove to the Darlinghurst station and asked to see Detective Colin Pascoe. The desk officer recognised my name from the paperwork attached to the Meadowbank killing.
‘You armed?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘We had a fuckin’ nutter in here yesterday. Yugoslav, as you’d expect. Pulled out this fuckin’ great gun and threatened to kill everyone unless his missus was brought back to him.’
‘I don’t see any broken glass. What happened?’
The desk man thumped his meaty fist down on the papers in front of him. ‘They’ve cleaned up the blood. One of our blokes flattened him, but good. The prick. You’ll find Detective Pascoe one floor up and along to the right. Room 6.’
Down led to the interrogation rooms, up to better things. I knocked on a glass-panelled door and opened it when I heard someone say, ‘It isn’t locked.’
The speaker was Pascoe—shirt-sleeved, bulging with a combination of fat and muscle, perched on a desk and abusing someone on the telephone. His assistant of the night before was head down and arse up at a desk, working his way through a stack of files. Pascoe waved me to a chair and with his free hand mimed the action of rolling a cigarette. I took out my tobacco, made two and handed him one. He dipped his head towards the light. He sucked hard on his first drag and the rollie was nearly half-consumed. I sat and waited for him to finish his call. The young plain-clothes man was expressionless but taking everything in.
Pascoe banged the phone down. ‘So, the private dick. The tough guy who rolls his own and chucks things at hitmen. What can I do for you?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno. Just staying in touch. Thought you might have mug shots for me to look at, might want to talk about an identification parade.’
‘Bullshit,’ Pascoe said.
‘Menzies wants to know if his client’s a suspect.’
‘That’s more like it. Yeah, why not? Tell him there’s a lot of self-made widows around. We catch a few of them. Not many. Our inquiries are proceeding. Anything else?’
‘I was wondering about my camera. When can I get it back?’
‘Got some more snooping to do, Hardy? Why don’t you earn an honest living? You look like a capable bloke. Evans speaks well of you.’
‘I’m hoping for better things. The camera?’
Pascoe turned to the younger man. ‘Why don’t you go out and get a cuppa tea, Ian?’
Ian moved with alacrity. ‘D’you want something, Colin?’
‘No, son. Just to be alone with my friend here.’
The door closed. ‘I should’ve asked him to get cigarettes,’ Pascoe said.
I started rolling.
‘The way things work,’ Pascoe said, ‘is that I pass this over to Homicide. But I still have an interest. If I come up with anything and hand it on and if it’s useful in some way ...’
I gave him a cigarette and lit him up.<
br />
‘Thanks. And if it’s useful, I can still score points. You follow me?’
I nodded and lit my own smoke.
‘You’re in my bailiwick, Hardy. St Peters Lane, Darlinghurst. I can be useful to you or I can be a fuckin’ awful nuisance.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘So, have you got anything to tell me?’
The plain fact was, I didn’t like his style and I trusted him even less. Ernie Glass would have called me a fool or something worse, but I stood up and squashed out my cigarette. ‘No. Nothing. How about my camera?’
‘Piss off.’
I went out quickly and took the stairs going down three at a time. I waved to the man on the desk and left the station. As I stepped onto the footpath I collided with someone coming the other way. We both lost balance and apologised. It was Pascoe’s offsider. I said I was sorry again and moved away.
‘Mr Hardy.’
I turned back. He was extending his hand. I shook it.
‘Ian Gallagher. I just wanted to say I thought you handled yourself pretty well the other night.’
‘I don’t think your boss agrees with you.’
‘Colin hasn’t got … ah, a lot of imagination. Now me, for example, I don’t think you came in just to ask about your camera.’
‘No?’
‘I think you might have been looking for a little reciprocity, some give and take. That’s not Colin’s style. You might do a bit better with me.’
He was a medium-sized, fair man with the Robert Redford kind of good looks. When I examined him a bit more closely I saw that, like Redford, he wasn’t quite as young as he seemed. There were slight crow’s-feet around his eyes and his skin was roughened by quite a few summers and winters. His blue eyes had a reproachful look. Could be a bit of frustrated ambition here, I thought.
‘I haven’t got much to give,’ I said.
‘I’ll take an IOU. Colin Pascoe’ll never get anywhere with this. I’ve got a feeling about it. There’s something subtle behind it. Now, you haven’t just dropped it, have you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Okay. My guess is you’re still working for one of the lawyers or maybe for the widow. I’ll give you something. Virginia Shaw, remember her?’
‘Miss Shaw,’ I said. ‘Meadowbank’s companion.’
‘Right. She gave us a cock and bull story about meeting Meadowbank at a business lunch and becoming attracted to him. Hard to picture, isn’t it?’
I shrugged. ‘Ava Gardner married Mickey Rooney.’
‘Virginia Shaw’s a high-class whore. She’s almost a professional co-re. Been up twice already. Three’s about the limit in that game before questions get asked. She wouldn’t come cheap and she’s got some nasty friends.’
‘Like who?’
He grinned. ‘That’s enough from me. I can see you’re interested, which means I was right—you’re still involved. So I’ve got something out of our talk after all. Just remember who to talk to first if you need any help. But the help won’t be free. Fair enough?’
He was away up the steps, not waiting for a response. A neat operator. Maybe Ernie Glass would have approved, but I think the idea was to manipulate the cops, not the other way around. Still, Gallagher had confirmed part of Virginia Shaw’s story. I walked to Riley Street where I’d parked. The hangover was a distant painful memory and I resolved not to do any daytime drinking. In my experience, hangovers are like old boxers, always ready to make a comeback. It was a warm morning, good for walking in the country or a park. Darlinghurst was something different. The money that had come into Paddington and Balmain to tidy up the houses and gardens, pave the footpaths and install speed humps hadn’t arrived here. The rows of terraces were faded and forbidding, patched with sheets of iron and three-ply and the plants that grew in the backyards looked as if they’d rather be somewhere else.
Still, I walked a few blocks for the exercise, passing the houses that wouldn’t open until the late afternoon when a woman would sit in the hallway with a magazine and a cigarette, showing her legs and tits, and the ones where pensioners anxiously parted the curtains watching for their cheques to arrive. There were shops that sold pies and Cokes to factory workers during the day and marijuana at night, and newsagents where the real selling items were kept under the counter. I felt almost respectable, with an office, a mortgage and a nearly paid-off car, but there were plenty of men around here lowering the level in their sherry bottles who had once been much more respectable than me.
I unparked the Falcon that was nearly mine and drove the short distance to St Peters Lane. Parking was a problem around here and I was in negotiation with a tattooist named Primo Tomasetti to rent a cement slab at the back of his parlour for a modest fee. Modesty was the main subject of the negotiation. I got lucky in Upper Forbes Street and found a decent-sized space—probably an ABC worker going to lunch. The thought sent me into a milk bar for a sandwich and a totally virtuous can of soft drink.
I climbed the steps from William Street and turned into St Peters lane from Upper Forbes. None of that trendy money had reached here either. The back walls of the buildings that front onto William Street were grey and bare apart from the graffiti and the stuff the bill posters put up—advertisements for rock concerts, boxing and wrestling matches, speedway events, martial arts—all the diversions of the ’70s. The posters got ripped and flapped in the breeze like sails. A few days earlier I’d noticed a Van Morrison poster, stuck over a dozen others, that had come adrift and opened out into the lane like a door. I liked Van Morrison and was sorry I’d missed the concert. As I walked up the lane, something felt strange. I tried to register it: no cars where they shouldn’t be, no one hanging about pretending to be what they weren’t …
I stopped twenty yards away from the door to my building. The lane was usually quiet. A church at the top end on the right, then the ABC premises. Nothing much on the other side. An auto-electrician’s workshop that had made the place busy in the past had closed down a couple of days before I signed my lease. In my building were an iridologist, an astronomical-chart drawer, a dental technician and me. Most of the offices were unlet and it was the same in the other buildings. The area had to be scheduled for renovation or demolition and redevelopment. So, not a lot of traffic, but there was something unnatural about this stillness.
It came to me in a flash and I reacted instinctively by flattening myself against the wall, pressing back into a long boarded-up doorway. All the flapping posters had been taken down and nothing had been put up in their place. The posters would have posed a problem for anyone trying to shoot from further up the lane. I trusted the feeling of danger; I’d had it too many times before in quiet kampongs and apparently empty paddy fields, but I felt ridiculous—this wasn’t Malaya, or Vietnam, or New York City. I sucked in a breath and realised that I’d been holding myself in a sort of suspended animation. Survival stuff. Why not? I moved my head out of its rigid, locked position and forced myself to look with one eye down the lane. I desperately wished for a weapon, but my Smith & Wesson .38 was locked away in the office filing cabinet.
To use even one eye you have to expose some forehead. I squinted up the lane, prepared to run forward to my doorway. What the hell if I looked ridiculous? I was imagining things. No one was watching. The bullet tore a furrow through the bricks a metre or so in front of me and whined off to hit the wall opposite. I was blinded by the brick dust but still registering impressions. The shot was muted. A silencer fitted. Bad for accuracy, but what use was that to me now?
I heard a sound behind me and used my undamaged eye to look. A car had turned into the lane and was coming slowly towards me. Jesus, I thought, a crossfire. Good planning, men. This is it.
The car continued slowly up the lane. It was a sleek green Rover, a respectable person’s car. The driver was a fat man, pale-faced, apprehensive.
‘Hardy!’ The harsh voice came from up near the church. ‘Leave it alone!’
The Rover stopped. I c
ould feel my fingers crushing the salad sandwich into a soggy mess. The driver wound down his window.
‘I’m looking for an auto-electrician,’ he said.
7
It wasn’t the first time I’d been shot at and it didn’t leave me weak and shaking, although it was a while before I could peel myself from the wall and go into my building. When I got to my door and fished for my key I realised I was still holding the food and drink. I put them on the desk and opened the drawer where I’d installed a cask of red wine. It was a good fit. I filled a coffee mug and rolled a cigarette. A bullet within a metre of the skull cancels out some good resolutions. Bitter lemon just wasn’t going to cut it. I smoked the cigarette, ate the squashed sandwich and drank the wine. All very natural functions and reassuring to be able to perform them. I wanted it to stay that way.
Given that, I had the option of doing what I was told—dropping it. I could return Virginia Shaw’s money, tear up her Melbourne number and get on with summons-serving and doing character checks for employers and looking for a little light car-repossession work. I could even spend some money—fly up to Cairns and see if Cyn was cheating on me with someone in a safari suit. A great start to my new, independent life as a small businessman that would be. Two jobs, two messes and a quick run for cover.
Not on. My phone call to Andrew Perkins had produced immediate results. I’d rubbed a few people the wrong way as an insurance investigator and there were those around who didn’t like me for one reason or another, but not enough to send a shooter. It had to be Perkins. The intention may not have been to kill me. It was hard to tell, also impossible to prove. Perkins didn’t have to go into hiding on my account, but he’d be on the defensive. What was clear was that Detective Ian Gallagher had been right—there was something behind the Meadowbank shooting, perhaps something big. I could go to Gallagher and show him … what? The chunk out of the wall? The brick dust in my hair?